


no distance that could hold us back

by misandrywitch



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Friendship, Hook-Up, Origin Story, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-08
Updated: 2015-07-08
Packaged: 2018-04-08 00:15:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4283355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misandrywitch/pseuds/misandrywitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack doesn’t really want to be friends with him, or with anyone, not here at this school and with these people. He wants to keep his head down and keep moving forward, keep playing and getting better and power through this year or few years or however long it will be, and move past it.</p><p>Life seems to have other plans, as life does.</p><p> </p><p>Or: The one where Jack and Shitty hook up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> shittybknights.tumblr.com

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> intro

Bitty learns a lot of things his first few months at Samwell. 

He learns how to do a keg stand, and how to pull an all-nighter, and how to talk 22 other grown men into watching Beyonce music videos with him. He learns how to shower with flip flops on, and how much caffeine he can drink in one go before he starts to feel woozy, and that hockey players will do just about anything for homemade pie. He learns what it feels like to say "I'm gay" out loud, and that teasing can be friendly, and he might embarrass himself in the weight room but he'll always outpace them skating suicides. 

What he doesn't seem to be able to figure out is why Jack doesn't like him. 

It's a silly thing to worry about, really, but Bitty worries about it anyway. Maybe it's pretty unimportant and he's got bigger problems and things to sink his time into. His often-neglected homework, for one. 

But there’s no crime in wanting people to like you, Bitty rationalizes, especially when that person is the captain of your hockey team. He’d felt so out of place on the team his first few weeks and he feels less so now, and Shitty and Ransom and Holster are huge parts of why that is, and maybe it shouldn’t really matter that Jack Zimmermann’s attitude towards him seems to bounce around from tolerating to lukewarm to downright icy. Bitty knows he’s not a great hockey player; that’s fine. It’s not that important to him that he’s great as long as he doesn’t feel he’s letting anyone down. Bitty likes being part of the team, the community and companionship and collection of weird people who all have each other’s backs. It’s something he felt he was missing for a long time in his life, even when he was a part of a team, something he hasn’t really had until now. Even in his second semester he’s still trying to wrap his head around not only his teammates’ behavior but the fact that he seems to fit into their lives without anyone threatening to shove him in a locker. He hangs out with people who will regularly walk into a kitchen to shotgun a beer at ten in the morning, and they not only tolerate his presence but seem to enjoy it. 

So maybe it shouldn’t matter that Jack Zimmermann doesn’t like him. But Bitty had thought maybe something was changing when Jack had bumped his fist into Bitty’s own outside of the rink before the Yale game, some kind of buildup from lots of very early morning checking practices that weren’t even necessarily unbearable. But then Bitty had scored, and Jack hadn’t been nice.

He brings it up to Shitty, because strangely enough Shitty’s the person Bitty’s ended up feeling closest to, the person who knows the most about him and who’s madcap wardrobe and bizarre mannerisms settle strangely but not badly with his earnest advice and friendship. They’re in Shitty’s room in the Haus, which is a bit of a jumbled mess and always smells like weed but not necessarily in an unpleasant way, poking through some homework and eating cookies. Shitty’s telling some story about Jack that he can barely finish because it makes him wheeze with laughter, and Bitty brings it up.

“I think Jack hates me,” he says, and he can’t hide how heavy his voice sounds about it.

“No way, bro,” Shitty replies automatically.

“No, I mean it,” Bitty says. “I mean he’s—“

“A grumpy motherfucker?”

“Your words, not mine. But I just feel like he really doesn’t like me.”

“Jack’s a tough nut to crack, Bits,” Shitty says. He’s sprawled across his bed with a textbook open on his stomach but he closes it to address Bitty directly. “He’s like that with everyone. Don’t worry too much about it. It’s not you.”

Bitty makes a face. Jack likes Shitty, doesn’t just tolerate him or put up with him for proximity reasons. Bitty’s come into the Haus a few times to hear them talking or laughing together, Shitty’s long loud braying laugh undercut by Jack’s quiet chuckle. At first, it seemed like Jack stumbled into Shitty's friendship by accident and doesn't really know how to escape it. But Bitty's starting to realize it's a strange mutual partnership. 

The first time he'd seen Shitty hug Jack off the ice, he'd practically dropped dead because it had been so weird to watch their captain voluntarily smile at another human being without hockey skates on. 

“Look,” Shitty says. “We’ve known each other since we were freshmen, right? He lived across the hall from me and we were on the team together, we couldn’t escape each other. We didn’t get along automatically, it took a while. Shoulda seen us beginning of freshman year.”

“What were y’all like your freshman year?” Bitty asks, and Shitty flips over onto his stomach to look at him with one eyebrow in the air. It’s a face that Bitty’s seen before, usually before Shitty is about to launch into a speech or a tale.

“Weeeeelp,” he says, “to be honest with you Bits the first time I met Jack I thought he was a handsome asshole.”

Bitty ignores the adjective to center on the noun. “Really?” he asks. “You guys seem so close.”

“Oh, we are now,” Shitty says, waving one hand around. “But I don’t know if you’ve noticed this yet, B, but Jack has an asshole veneer. He puts it on like putting on a fucking jacket, so the trick is to take off the jacket and get to the good stuff underneath.”

“Um,” Bitty says.

“Let me put it to you this way,” Shitty wiggles across the bed. He points up at Bitty and nods to himself. “You gotta defrost that motherfucker. He’s all ice and impressive frown and brooding shoulders on the outside but on the inside he’s a complete loser with a bad sense of humor and the inability to dress himself. You just gotta chip through the layer of ice surrounding that. You gotta do the work.”

“Yeah, but you get along with everybody,” Bitty says doubtfully. 

“Untrue. And you’re composed of, like, sunshine, brahski. Jack’s just a stubborn dick-in-a-box about things and he takes a while to warm up to people. It’ll be fine.”

“Okay,” Bitty says, feeling a little better. “I guess. What did you do to get him to warm up to you?”

“Oh, you know,” Shitty says, even though Bitty does not know at all. “I demanded he become friends with me for a start and I think he was too polite to tell me to fuck off.” Shitty makes a funny face that Bitty can’t guess the meaning of, like he’s laughing at his own inside joke. “And we—well. Y’know. Freshman year was some real whack shit.”

“Right,” Bitty says, confused. “Well, I’ll take your word for it I guess.”

 “Swear to god,” Shitty says, then pauses. “Speaking of,” he says, and points towards his bedroom door. There’s someone coming up the stairs, not Shitty’s own few-at-a-time jumps or Ransom and Holster’s double-team dash.

“Jaaaaaack?” Shitty yells.

“Hey Shitty—“ Jack says, and Shitty launches himself up off the bed and hits the ground running. Bitty jumps up after him to see where he’s off to and he’s in time around the door to see Shitty take a flying leap in Jack’s direction. Jack is in jeans and plaid, carrying his school bag over his shoulder, and he yells in anger when Shitty barrels in his direction but catches him anyway. Shitty ends up sprawled in Jack’s arms, one arm around Jack’s shoulders with Jack’s arms under his knees and upper back.

“I could have been holding something!” Jack yells. Shitty grins up at him, and Bitty can’t help laughing because they make such a ridiculous picture. “What if I’d been carrying coffee, eh? Or my computer?”

“Sure bro, and you would’ve dropped it, because you love me and appreciate my companionship.”

Jack sighs, but not in a way that seems to indicate he disagrees.

“Now go on,” Shitty says, waving a hand grandiosely. “You’ve swept me off my feet, now carry me over the threshold.”

“I hope you don’t expect me to put out after this,” Jack says, and Bitty chokes because never in his life would he have expected to hear Jack Zimmermann say those words. “Because I think I’m developing a headache.” But he walks up the hall and towards Shitty’s door with Shitty in his arms.

“You never hold me anymore,” Shitty says. “All the passion’s gone. See, Bits? What did I tell you?” Bitty moves out of the way of Shitty’s door, still laughing, and Jack pauses like he’s spotted him for the first time. “You just gotta defrost him! Like the abominable snowman. Bleak but handsome and all gooey on the inside like a candy.”

Jack glances down at Shitty’s grinning face, and then over at Bitty, and then he sighs very deeply and drops Shitty unceremoniously onto his bed.

“Ow!” Shitty yells. “You Neanderthal!”

“Sorry,” Jack says. “Guess I’m too bleak and handsome to help it.”

“True, not your fault,” Shitty sighs.

“Bye, Shitty. Bye, Bittle,” Jack says, and leaves the room and walks down the hall.

Bitty watches him turn out of Shitty’s door, and wonders what the hell happened during Jack and Shitty’s freshman year to produce this as the end result. He's a little afraid to ask. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 14 scenes from a friendship

1. 

The first time Shitty hears about Jack Zimmermann, he thinks he’s going to be a complete fucking asshole.

He’s suffering through another week at his dad’s a few weeks before he’s due to pack up and head to school and be free of the whole situation at least until Thanksgiving, and he’s halfheartedly reading a book in the living room as his father reads the paper in his armchair. He keeps frowning and making disconcerting noises, which Shitty tries to ignore.

“Hm,” his dad says eventually.

“What,” Shitty snaps.

“The son of that hockey player you like will be going to school with you, looks like,” his dad says.

“Uh?” Shitty has no idea who is dad is talking about.

“Zimmermann,” his dad says, and Shitty frowns. Bad Bob Zimmermann isn’t necessarily his favorite player but he supposes he should be gratified his dad’s remembered that Shitty’s mentioned him a few times at some point in his life.

“The kid who went to rehab?” Shitty asks. His dad nods.

“Can’t imagine why he would want to go to Samwell,” he says. “Money like that, you could go anywhere. Seems like he should just get drafted again, doesn’t it? What did he do, anyway? Cocaine? Waste of talent, if you ask me. That’s what happens when young men with too much money run out of control.”

Shitty thinks his dad should probably leech some of the condescension out of his voice considering the number of his rich fuck friends who do coke on the weekends without their wives knowing, but he doesn’t say this.

“Yeah, he sounds like a crapload of fun,” he says, closing his book. “A real stuck up asshole, probably. Should just send him to Harvard.”

His dad makes a disapproving face so Shitty leaves the room, stealing the paper as he goes to confirm the news. Jack Zimmermann is coming to Samwell, going to play hockey, meaning he’ll be on the team with Shitty. Shitty shrugs and abandons the paper in the bathroom before locking himself in his bedroom to smoke up.

He knows dudes like Jack Zimmermann, he thinks. Lots of them went to Andover. He’s self-aware enough to know that he’s maybe a bit of a rich asshole himself, but he knew a lot of kids who were richer and douchier than he could ever be who ran wild, had drug problems, got into trouble and got out of it because their parents knew who to pay off. Not that he agrees with his dad, though. Whatever.

 

Go figure that Jack Zimmermann would end up right across the hall from him. Some really whack shit. Shitty and his mom spend an afternoon hauling a few disorganized boxes of clothing and books and some posters and hockey equipment up three flights of stairs that Shitty thinks he is going to despise in a few weeks (Shitty’s dad elected not to come move him in) and there’s a name, written by some RA in sharpie on a paper flag and stuck on the door across the hall, that reads “J. Zimmermann.” Shitty’s own reads “B. Knight.”

“No fucking way,” Shitty says. “Huh.”

“What was that?” his mom drops a box and shakes her head.

“Nothing,” Shitty shakes his head.

“Want to get lunch before I head back, honey?” she asks, brushing her hair over her shoulder.

“Sure,” Shitty says. “I think I’m gonna grow a mustache, what do you think?”

“Your grandparents will hate it,” his mom says, and they laugh and troop back down the stairs again.

 

When Shitty returns that night he’s blocked from getting into his room by a pile of boxes and a hockey bag sitting in the hallway. Asshole, he thinks.

“Yo!” He yells, because he can see movement from the other side of the boxes in the open door of the room across the hall. “Need a hand or something? Not real keen to go mountain climbing over someone else’s belongings.”

“Uh,” a voice says. “Yes, but be careful.”

“I’ll push from this end,” Shitty says. “You didn’t think this through, did you? Ready?” Shitty says, and he shoves the boxes through the doorway unceremoniously as whoever’s on the other end hauls the hockey bag out of the way. A minute later, Shitty’s out of breath and gets his first glimpse of Jack Zimmermann. He’s tall, in need of a haircut, tired-looking, and the sleeves of his dark hoodie are rolled up over his forearms. Dark hair, strong jaw, very blue eyes.

Well, Shitty thinks. A handsome asshole then. At least he’s good to look at. He’s frowning.

“Yo,” Shitty says, and he gives the boxes another shove. One of them at the top of the pile wobbles precariously and the tips, and Jack Zimmermann says something Shitty doesn’t catch and reaches out to catch it at the last minute. Something inside the box tinkles, like glass.

“Shit,” Shitty says.

“Watch it!” Zimmermann snaps. “What the hell are you doing?” He has an accent, French-Canadian.

“Clearing a path to my own goddamn bedroom,” Shitty replies sourly. “This is a public hallway, y’know.”

“Well thanks for your help, I guess,” Zimmermann says, in a tone that implies he is very much not thankful at all. “But I got it.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Shitty shoves the pile of boxes one more time just because, and then he crosses the hall and shuts his bedroom door.

Asshole. 

 

2.

 The first time Jack meets B. Knight he's on the ice for their first day of practice. They're all doing some kind of warmup icebreaker drill, the kind of thing Jack has always hated but doesn't seem to be able to escape, pairing off in a big line. Jack glances over at the man across from him that he's supposed to introduce himself to and then skate around with, and his stomach drops.

"Oh," Jack says.

"Yeeeeeeeep, howdy neighbor," says the guy who lives across the hall from him. He waves. He has an untidy mop of brown hair, very green eyes and a long nose, a pronounced Boston accent and a toothy grin. More eccentric than handsome. And Jack had yelled at him last night. He looks hungover. Most of the team looks hungover, bleary-eyed and a little nauseous, and Jack suspects there had been a welcome-back party the night before. He'd gone to bed around eleven, and hadn't slept very well, had tossed and turned on his lumpy single mattress listening to people laughing and talking in the hallway. 

"Shitty," his partner says.

"Excuse me?" Jack is taken aback. 

"That's my name! Well, my nickname, but it's what you can call me. Shitty Knight."

"I'm Jack," Jack says. "We'd better--" he gestures at the ice, and Shitty Knight shrugs and skates off, high-fiving a few people and laughing as he goes. 

So far, Jack has been asked about his father twelve times, about rehab three, and for an autograph six. At least Shitty Knight doesn't say anything else. 

 

Jack is most concerned with proving to the Samwell coaches that he's still got it, isn't rusty or worrisome or a powder keg waiting to go off. He feels a bit like all of those things, but he tells himself he just needs to power through the first few weeks of practice, focus on his game. Ignore the talk, the questions, the looks in the locker room. Jack doesn't see it being worth his time to jump in the middle of it, or change anyone's minds. He will on the ice, and that's what matters. They don't have to like him, they just have to play hockey with him. Talk is talk, rumors are rumors, and he's dealt with worse before this. That's what Jack tells himself. 

It feels a little lonely practicing without someone to wisecrack with, someone who's always sending Jack the puck or there when Jack needs a hand. But it's not like he hasn't been there before. 

What he has a hard time dealing with is how some people don't seem to take it seriously. It's something Jack had expected at least a little, and of course it's going to be different, but Samwell's team is good, and has been consistently for a while. He'd assumed they'd all be dialed in and focused on the new season, especially because school itself hasn't begun yet.

It's not everyone, of course. But Jack is sitting at breakfast after practice listening to Shitty Knight tell a very dramatic story about the exploits of his old high school hockey team and how he's hoping this team will put all of that to shame, and he finds himself thinking that if this continues for the rest of the year Jack might end up taking his head off with his skate. 

 

"If you're not going to follow the rules of the drill, why don't you shut up so those of us who care about this can concentrate?" Jack snaps finally one practice, after flubbing a shot because of the group of freshmen and sophomores who are trying to knock each other over at the back of the rink. 

Knight pulls himself up off the ice and dusts himself off, laughter still on his face. He seems completely unaffected by Jack's anger, which makes Jack madder. "Okay, alright," he says. "Calm down, man." 

"I get that you don't think this is that important, but for some of us it is," Jack barks. "It wouldn't kill you to pay attention and take this a little more seriously. Otherwise I don't know what you're doing here." 

Knight shrugs one shoulder. "Don't think it'd kill you to crack a smile once in a while," he says. "But you better not risk it, just in case. Who knows? You might have fun, maybe." 

"Whatever," Jack gives up and skates in the other direction, shaking his head. Behind him, someone laughs. 

"What's up his ass?" Knight asks. "Holey-fucking-moley that was intense." 

"Not like we're playing in the damn N-H-L," someone else says, and there's more laughter.

That's right, Jack thinks. Sure isn't. 

 

He has to go across the hall that night to bang on Shitty Knight's bedroom door because he's playing insufferably loud music that sounds like someone with nasal congestion is wailing sadly with a guitar in the background. When he opens the door, Knight is wearing a fluffy bathrobe and smiley-face boxers, and carrying a gigantic bong in one hand.

"Oh shit man, thought you were the RA," he says, laughing. "That would have been bad right?"

"Turn your music down," Jack says. "Or I will call the RA."

"What, you don't like the Mountain Goats?" 

Jack doesn't know what that means, and he doesn't want to know. "No," he says, and slams the door. 

Dick. 

 

3.

The building that houses a few of the hockey team’s upperclassmen, which by the end of September has been elevated to capital-letter status in Shitty’s brain (Haus instead of house) is abominable. It looks like a crack house, and there’s a hole in one of the bathroom doors and it smells like B.O. and beer and someone was probably murdered in the street behind it at some point. The first time he sees it Shitty decides he’ll do anything he can to find a way to live in it next year, though the truth is he doesn’t just want to live there, he wants to rule over it, put the current hockey captain to shame. He has no plans to be captain of the team, fuck no, but he wants to be captain of the ridiculous ramshackle wonderful mess that shelters the team during their wildest parties.

Andover parties could get pretty wild because they were all bottled up together and told to behave; Shitty had been involved in several very adventurous woods parties with his old hockey team, and you could always find someone willing to pass off some illicit booze or a few joints or some questionally home-brewed beer or moonshine if you were charismatic and knew what to say.

But they’re nothing  compared to this. He loves it. Party noise and chaos and alcohol gets under his skin in the right way, drowning everything else out, an excuse to cut loose and not feel guilty for it. The first month of school has been a whirlwind of grueling practices and lowkey freshman hazing and classes and parties, and Shitty’s having a good time so far. No complaints.

He’s standing in the living room of the Haus with some of the first liners, drinking some noxious combination of Red Bull and vodka, and the conversation swings around to Samwell’s own celebrity face, as it tends to.

“Where’s Zimmermann?” Alex Berger asks, and a shrug passes around the circle Shitty’s standing in.

“Don’t think he showed up.”

“What,” Cohen sniggers, “he thinks he’s too cool to hang out with us?”

“He’s a frog just like the rest of you, NHL dad or not.”

“He seems pretty stuck up. Good on the ice though,” Marsh shrugs. 

“Yeah, but what the fuck? We get it dude, you don’t think Samwell’s team’s good enough for you, message received.”

“Yo, give him a break,” Shitty says finally, feeling a little prickly. “You don’t know him at all, and neither do I.” They blink at him.

“Maybe he’s shy,” Johnson, the goalie, nods a little in agreement. “He hasn’t gone through his character development yet.”

“Why are you always so weird, man?”

“Maybe he’s a douchebag.”

“He’s kind of a dick to you, Shitty. Never really talks to anyone. Takes himself way too seriously,” Berger says. 

“I dunno,” Shitty shrugs. “Going from being drafted to here’s gotta be pretty rough? So cut him some fucking slack, alright?”

“Whatever.”

 “Okay,” Shitty says. “I’m gonna get a refill.”

He doesn’t. He wanders a little drunkenly out of the building to sit on the steps, staring at the mostly-empty drink in his hand and feeling suddenly and very wholeheartedly like a dick. The whole point of coming to college is to expand your mind or whatever, learn about the world, encounter some new shit, and he’d been pretty crappy, even if it was just in his own head. Just as bad as those guys in there.

“Grow the fuck up, Knight,” he says out loud, and some people walking up to the door of the house frown at him. “Fuck off,” Shitty grumbles at them, and he gets up and wanders his way back towards his dorm.

 

Zimmermann does take stuff way too seriously, he’s not going to beat around the bush and pretend that’s not true. He’s a dude who could benefit from a bong hit, or a hit over the head with a baseball bat, or something.

But he also seems a little lonely.

 

Naturally, Jack is walking back into his bedroom when Shitty walks up the hall. Shitty’s drunk so he waves enthusiastically, and to his surprise Jack pauses and nods in his direction.

“Hey, man,” he says. He’s wearing ratty sweatpants and a probably recently purchased Samwell athletics t-shirt. “How was the party?”

“Party was alright, dudes were being dicks so I dipped,” Shitty leans against the wall next to Jack’s doorframe. “Experiencing the weird dynamics of college sports culture firsthand is a trip, lemme tell you.”

 “I can’t say I would have thought you’d be a NASCAR fan,” Jack says, looking at Shitty’s shirt. Shitty cackles.

“No fucking way! It’s ironic or something. How un-American can I make this very American thing that lots of annoying fucks think is right up there with organized religion and Coors light. Stole it from an ex. Ex for a reason, yikes.”

“Let me rephrase that then,” Jack says. “I can’t say I would have thought you’d sleep with a NASCAR fan.”

“Big dick, good hair,” Shitty says, and Jack surprises him by laughing. He has a funny quiet chuckle that Shitty likes a lot. “What are you doing up anyway?” Shitty asks. “Not that I’m an expert, but it definitely isn’t Grandma-O-Clock right now.”

“Couldn’t sleep,” Jack says. “And, uh. I’m.” He pauses and chews on his bottom lip and Shitty thinks he’s going to say something really awkward but then he continues, “watching a documentary about Pearl Harbor.”

Shitty laughs, until he realizes Jack isn’t joking. “Wait, really?” he says. “You’re from the Great White North, my friend. Why the fuck do you care about America’s darkest day or whatever?”

Jack shrugs, looking down. “I’ve always been interested in history,” he says. “I’ll probably major in it.”

“No shit,” Shitty says. “You’ve got layers.” He thinks about saying goodnight and then remembers the conversation from earlier, his own estimation that Jack Zimmermann seems kind of lonely. “You want company?”

Jack’s face brightens a little.

“I’ve got some illicit booze in my dorm I could be talked into sharing,” Shitty continues, and Jack’s face falls.

“Uh,” he says. “I don’t drink.”

Oh. Foot, mouth. No fucking shit, Knight, Jesus fucking Christ. “Alright, cool,” Shitty shrugs. “I’ll save it for another time, whatever. I guess that, uh,” he pauses, “well you got a pretty good reason to not put yourself through tonight’s quintessential college experience, huh?”

“That’s not really why I’m here,” Jack says mysteriously.

“Why are you here?” Shitty asks. “If you don’t mind me asking such an irritating and completely cliché question.”

Jack blinks at him. “To play hockey,” he says, and Shitty thinks about laughing for a second but then changes his mind. “And to figure out what’s next, I guess,” Jack continues. “What about you?”

“Uh,” now it’s Shitty’s turn to look a bit put out. “Everything, man. Who knows! To expand my mind, discover some new shit about the state of the universe and my place in it. Uncover the truth about the government’s cover-ups at Roswell.” He’s riffing, but he keeps going. “To suck some dicks, do some drugs, fall in love maybe, have a good time. I don’t know, man, and that’s the point! That’s the whole college experience, right? You don’t know. Anything could theoretically fucking happen if you let it, you know, and I kinda wanna let it.” Shitty nods at his own wisdom for a moment. “What’s gonna happen right now is that I’m gonna learn some new shit about Pearl Harbor, seeing as I know exactly zero about it.”

Jack studies him for a moment and Shitty stares up at him and holds his ground. “Alright,” Jack says, and unlocks his bedroom door.

 

4. 

Jack can’t figure out why B. Knight is so determined to befriend him, and he also can’t figure out why he doesn’t mind it. He’s good on the ice, not great but good, solid, always has Jack’s back. And he’s funny, in a loud, clever and slightly grating way that never actually devolves into annoying. He’s not really like anyone Jack’s spent time with before, because Shitty’s an athlete but he’s a lot of other things too. His life doesn’t revolve around hockey.

Jack doesn’t really want to be friends with him, or with anyone, not here at this school and with these people. He wants to keep his head down and keep moving forward, keep playing and getting better and power through this year or few years or however long it will be, and move past it.

Life seems to have other plans, as life does.

 

Shitty sits next to Jack at team breakfast, and he knocks on Jack’s door and bothers him while Jack is trying to do homework, and he designates a seat next to Jack on the bus ride to their first away game. They win, so naturally they have to keep it up. In retaliation, Jack starts waking Shitty up to run with him early in the morning, which results in truly impressive grumbling. Shitty sings under his breath when he jogs. He’s very bad at singing.

"I really need to to do this reading," Jack will say, in the meanest and most unpleasant voice he can pull off, and Shitty will shrug.

"Chill. I've got like so much fucking reading for this Poli Sci seminar. It's from hell." And he'll flop down on Jack's bed while Jack plows through Ernest Hemingway, shaking his head and arguing with his textbook when he thinks it's wrong.

It's almost companionable.  

 

They also suffer through the mostly harmless errands and hazing that comes their way because they’re freshman together. It involves a lot of weird fetch quests and beer grabbing; one afternoon Jack and Shitty and a red-headed defenseman wannabe who’s name Jack keeps forgetting have been sent to hunt through a storage closet in the farthest corner of the rink for jock straps. Jack has answered all the guy’s questions as shortly as he can without sounding impolite (Yes, that baby photo wasn’t photoshopped, No, I can’t get my dad’s autograph for you).

“History,” Jack says, when he’s asked what he’s majoring in, and doesn’t elaborate.

“What about you?”

“Gender studies, man,” Shitty says, head half in the closet.

“Really?” Jack asks.

“Hell yeah!”

“Best way to pick up chicks, right?” The other freshman says.

Shitty’s head pops up out of the closet. “Not my reason,” he says. “I’m genuinely interested in it! Samwell’s program’s really fucking good, huge part of the reason I picked here over Harvard.”

“Wait, you got into Harvard?”

“Fuck Harvard,” Shitty says sourly, dragging boxes out of the closet. “I mean, yes, but my grandfather also has an auditorium in the H-B-S with his name on it so they were probably scared to not let me in. I’m Harvard legacy, or something. Rather get by on my own merits, thanks.”

There’s a silence, and Jack finds himself feeling suddenly and unexpectedly warm towards Shitty even as he shoves boxes at them.

“Anyway,” Shitty says, “back to your original point, if you declare a major with the sole intention of getting with women you have no respect or game and should feel bad for yourself. Men should be interested in gender shit too, right? I had this, like, revelation a couple of months ago. Masculinity is a prison, man, and it traps us as surely as it traps women. Think about it."

"But if it works you're not gonna complain too much, right?" 

"Dude," Shitty shakes his head. "Here's a hot tip about getting girls to talk to you. Be nice to them. It's that easy. I'm not even that good looking and I do alright because I can carry on a genuine conversation that's motivated by something beyond 'Oooh boobs!' I like boobs as much as the next guy, mind you--" 

“Haha, yeah,” the other freshman says, and wanders off with his boxes in hand.

“Idiot,” Shitty shakes his head. "You say 'boobs' and they're mentally checking out already. What's so complicated about being polite to girls?" He frowns, like he's thinking about his own argument, then keeps going. He seems to be unaware that Jack is staring at him. "The girl I dated -- up until this summer -- the kind of girl who'd eat you alive for any tomfoolery like that. Wanted to be wined and dined and all that shit. At seventeen. Fucking trust fund kids. But she had an impact, man. And my mom -- for a different reason, Jesus. Earth to Zimmermann-- did I lose you at 'boobs' five minutes ago?"

“You, uh,” Jack doesn’t even know why he feels like he needs to say something, but he’d felt like they might have had something in common, even if his own proclivities are so far unspoken to anyone who knows him at Samwell. “I thought--” Jack starts.

“Thought what?” Shitty glances over at him.

“I, well. I assumed the ex with the NASCAR shirt was a guy,” Jack says, all in a rush.

“Oh, he is,” Shitty says. “He's at Notre Dame now, big fucking surprise, studying Computer Science or some shit. An ill-advised tryst my junior year, but it does mean I'll have an excuse to drink if anyone ever pulls the 'fucked a Republican' card in Never-Have-I-Ever. One of those dudes who describes themselves as fiscally conservative but socially liberal, which really just means he wants suck cock but not care about poor people while he's at it. Uh, why?”

“You just said, um,” Jack is beginning to think this is a bad idea. It isn’t his place to comment on what people say to others or why they might want to cover up the truth. He stops because he doesn’t know what else to say.

“Oh,” Shitty says a second later. Apparently he picked up on it anyway.

“Sorry, I didn’t—“

“The rigid confines of gender expectations are as constricting as the obstacle course of heterosexuality," Shitty says, frowning up at Jack. "In that, well, proclivities are different and sexuality runs on a spectrum and the more I think about it the more I think I'm somewhere in the middle of it all -- sometimes I think it was just to prove a point, but I don't know. I dated and dumped Allison and still find the whole thing kind of bewildering in its lack of clarity, but my point is here that I think I check a bunch of boxes. Maybe? You know?

"I-- what?" Jack has no idea what Shitty just said to him. 

“SAY THE B WORD!” Shitty yodels, so unexpectedly and loudly that Jack jumps about a foot in the air, and he chucks the box of jock straps at Jack so hard that it bounces off Jack’s chest, and he takes off down the hall. Jack can hear his laughter as he turns the corner. 

 

 

He tries to apologize to Shitty later and Shitty laughs it off, clapping Jack on the arm, which is a relief because Jack has no idea how to even start apologizing for something like that and the whole process makes him feel dry-mouthed and uncomfortable. 

"No worries, bro," Shitty says. 

"I really didn't mean to--"

"At least you didn't think I was straight," Shitty says. They're in the hallway space between their two doors, and Shitty is drinking orange juice out of the carton and wearing boxers and fluffy bedroom slippers. Jack had been on his way back from the shower when he'd bumped into him and trying to apologize to someone in a bathrobe with wet hair isn't really ideal, but Shitty doesn't seem to mind. 

"Now I know what the "B" stands for," Jack says, and points at the RA-made nametag on Shitty's door that reads B. Knight. Shitty's face lights up.

"That is a good one!" He crows. "Oh, I'm going to use it forever, thank you, seriously, why did I never think of that. Shitty Bisexual Knight, nice to meet you." 

"No problem," Jack says, and he goes to get dressed. 

 

5. 

In November they play Yale, and it’s a rough and gritty game, zero-zero in the third period. Shitty and Jack are both out on the ice, Shitty feeling a bit out-skated as usual, and one of the Yale players checks Jack. It’s hard and unnecessary, and the guy came from halfway across the ice to get to him, and he slams Jack up against the boards so hard Jack’s head snaps back a little. Shitty’s close enough to see the guy make a motion with his hands, like he’s snorting coke off his fingers, and his smirk, and how Jack’s face drops and goes tight.

The Yale player skates off and Shitty follows him fast, and hits him in the face with his stick as hard as he can.

He doesn’t even wait to hear the ref’s call before he skates over to the penalty box, swearing as he goes. “EAT THAT, MOTHERFUCKER,” Shitty shouts. “I’ll shove it up your ass next time if you’re not gonna play like a fucking civilized human being! Sorry he’s a better skater than you, you mangy shitweasel from hell! Get over it!”

Jack’s face as Shitty skates by, still shouting obscenities, is shocked.

Five minutes later Jack scores, and they win.

Shitty throws himself at him and the whole team follows, hollering and hugging each other and lifting Jack up a little in the middle of the many-armed mess. Jack is grinning, an expression Shitty’s never seen on his face before.

Maybe jumping to Jack Zimmermann’s defense isn’t his job, but Shitty doesn’t mind it. It certainly doesn’t feel like a chore. It’s something friends do. 

 

 

Jack goes to find Shitty after everyone’s cleared out of the locker room. They’re all going to celebrate, and he’s almost considering going along, at least for a little while. It had been a good shot, and there’s a text from his father on his phone in his pocket that he hasn’t read yet, but the thought doesn’t make him seize up inside right now.

Shitty’s still in the locker room when Jack pokes his head in there, humming tunelessly to himself in his underwear. He’d gotten chewed out by their coaches for his high sticking, but didn’t seem to be in bad spirits because of it.

“Hey,” Shitty says, and it comes out more like “Heeeeeeeeey,” because Shitty’s vowels seem to stretch out to twice their size. “Good fucking goal!”

“It was alright. But thanks,” Jack says, and means it. “And thanks for. Um. You didn’t have to do that.”

“I know,” Shitty says. “But it was funny, right?”

Jack shakes his head, because he can’t say it wasn’t.

“Look, dude,” Shitty says. He turns and puts his hand on Jack’s shoulder. “That guy needed to get hit in the face. I did the world a favor. No big.”

Jack doesn’t know what to say, so he doesn’t say anything. His chest feels tight, but not in a bad way.

“You gonna come celebrate? I’ll deflect so you can keep filling your cup with tonic.”

“Tonic?”

“Oh,” Shitty laughs. “Soda, for those of you not from Boston.”

“For a little while,” Jack says, and Shitty grins and squeezes his shoulder before turning back around to grab his clothes. He starts to wriggle into his jeans and turns and looks at Jack over his shoulder.

“Was a damn good goal, you beautiful motherfucker,” he says, and he winks. It makes Jack’s face go hot.

Oh shit, Jack thinks. Oh fuck no. 

 

6. 

Jack does not have the time, or the energy, to be distracted by a crush. So he decides to ignore it until it goes away. It’s perhaps not the best idea, but it’s certainly a better one than dealing with it. It’s for his own good.  

 

7.

Right before Christmas, Jack rescues Shitty from a tree where he finds himself stranded. It’s the culmination of a long complicated story involving several dares that Shitty starts to tell him as Jack helps him clamber down out of the tree, cell phone in one hand and beer in the other. Shitty had neglected to text Jack that he was butt naked, though. (His text had just indicated his fear of freezing to death if he didn’t get down). Jack manages to both not feel Shitty up and not be overly obvious about the fact that he can’t help looking. They play hockey together, it’s fine. Shitty’s fit, and that’s also fine.

They get themselves back to the dorm and manage to dash upstairs without anyone seeing Shitty streaking through the hall, and Shitty yanks his duvet over his shoulders, shivering, and snakes one arm around Jack’s middle. His fingers meet the spot where Jack’s shirt is riding up, right over the waistband of his sweatpants. They’re chilly.

“You’re a bro,” he says, “really you are.” He smells like weed, but Shitty always smells like weed and Jack’s almost starting to just not notice it. “You’re an indispensible light in my life, Z-Mann.”

“You are not allowed to adopt that as a nickname,” Jack says emphatically. “I forbid it.”

“You wound me,” Shitty says, clasping at his heart. “Man I’m fucking freezing. You saved my life and my dick, probably.”

“We could have left the best part of you behind in that tree,” Jack says, and Shitty laughs uproariously which makes him feel pleased with himself. He’s trying to ignore the fact that this whole situation is ridiculous, that college is ridiculous and Shitty is ridiculous and he feels pretty ridiculous but doesn’t really mind it. Jack feels almost flattered that Shitty got stuck up a tree with no pants and decided to call him to get him down. There are other people he could have called. Shitty has other friends, loads of them. But he’d called Jack.

“I deserved that one, bro,” Shitty says, leaning against Jack’s side. Jack can feel his laugh against his ribs as Shitty chuckles. That’s fine too. 

 

8. 

 

Shitty doesn’t officially declare it his mission to make sure Jack has fun, but he certainly gives it a shot now and then. Most of the time it’s pretty hopeless, but it’s fun enough to try. He accidentally gets into a few fights on Jack’s behalf too, half for the fun of it and half because people are real assholes and can’t seem to mind their own business. He knows he probably qualifies as someone with a danger-seeking personality, does things half for the thrill of it and half out of curiosity, but Jack rarely jumps to his own defense and Shitty doesn't mind. It's like a hobby. 

 

 

The first time someone comes up to Jack and asks for his autograph when Shitty’s around, his eyes bug out of his head. The offender is a girl with a blonde bob and her friends who are standing behind her egging her on when she walks up to them in the library where they’re sitting with a few other team members. Everyone pauses to stare at Jack, who looks up from the textbook he’s busy taking notes out of.

“Uh,” he says, and he looks flustered and uncomfortable, out of place and sweltering under all their eyes on him all of a sudden. So Shitty takes action.

“Holy shit,” he breathes, loudly. Everyone turns to look at him. “You’re—oh my God—you’re my favorite fucking player, guys, it’s Jack Zimmermann! Did you realize this? Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

His teammates stare at him. Shitty stands up.

“Look, I just gotta, I—“ he fakes getting choked up, “you know I hate to do this but I really just, oh my God, you’re my hero, Jack Zimmermann, my hero! Look will you—“ and he yanks off his shirt, tossing it across the table dramatically. He then collapses onto his knees in front of Jack’s seat. The team is laughing, now, egging him on.

“You got this, man, be brave!” Johnson says.

“Jack Zimmermann will you sign my abdomen!” Shitty bellows, gazing up at him in adoration.

“Well,” Jack says, deadpan. “I can’t refuse a fan. Who should I make it out to?” He picks up his highlighter.

Shitty pretends to faint when Jack reaches down to scribble his initials across his chest. By the time he sits up again, the girls are gone.

 

 

Shitty is also self-aware enough to admit to himself early on that if Jack Zimmermann was into it, he’d hit that right into left field. It’s worse when he figures out Jack has a sense of humor, but nobody needs to know. 

 

9.

 

In February, Jack’s dad calls him up to tell him he’d like to come down and see a game before the season’s over, maybe the last weekend of that month or the first in April because neither he or Alicia have a whole lot going on.

“Okay,” Jack says into the phone. “That sounds fine. Okay. Bye.” He hangs up the phone. And then he has a panic attack.

It’s almost comical, because he sees it coming and it hits him like clockwork and it’s too late to do anything about it other than sit still and hope that it goes away. His chest seizes up, hard and fast and uncompromising, and his head starts swimming and his breath comes in wheezes and gasps, irregular and disjointed.

There was a point in his life where he’d hoped he would grow out of this, the panic, the unstoppable and uncontrollable way that his body stops listening to him. That it was some teenage nervousness thing that he could be rid of if he willed it, an iron-tight grip on everything else he got involved in to make up for the fact that he was always on a razor’s edge of flying out of his own control. When he realized that sheer force of will wouldn’t do it, he tried other measures.

He knows better, now.

Jack lets himself slide off his bed and sit with his back against his desk, drops his head between his hands which are shaking. He tries to breathe and not see spots, but it’s too late already and everything is swimming and there’s a dull pounding right at the base of his skull that’s so loud and real he can feel it like someone is—

The door to his bedroom flies open a second later, and Jack jumps but it’s too late to get out of Shitty’s line of sight.

“Hey brah,” Shitty is saying, loudly and cheerfully, “you gonna open up or what? I just had the most hilarious run-in with—uh—hey, hey?”

Jack can’t make himself say anything, or even move. He just stares up at Shitty from between his knees.

Shitty’s expression changes, his eyebrows moving together, and he shuts the door fast behind him. “Hey, man,” he says, and his voice is soft in a way Jack hasn’t really heard it before. “You alright? Jack?” There’s nothing joking in his voice, but also nothing pitying. He seems to have realized what’s going on and he takes one step closer but stops, doesn’t reach out to touch Jack or get up in his space.

“Want me to fuck off?” Shitty asks. “You text me or something if you want me to come back? Or I can run and get you some water?”

Even through the panic this makes Jack pause. It isn’t like he’s never been in this situation before, people he knows seeing him like this, and he hates it every time because it’s infantilizing, it’s infuriating. His mom would always get too close in the most well-meaning way, rubbing his back, trying to get him to talk. His dad, almost the opposite. Jack’s dealt with that, and he’s also dealt with a countless number of nervous hands on either side of his face, a litany of, “Hey Zimms, c’mon man snap out of it, c’mon Zimms it’s okay, breathe.” Easier said than done.

But Jack finds that he doesn’t really want Shitty to go and his presence, a considerate distance away, his green eyes focused on Jack’s face, aren’t unwelcome. He shakes his head. Shitty sits down, crosses his legs like a Boy Scout and rests his elbows on them.

“So,” he says, “I have to tell you what Johnson just said to me, because you are gonna laugh. That dude is weird, man.”

Shitty tells his story and Jack listens, focusing on his words and his breathing, Shitty’s funny inflections and the way Jack can almost feel the italics and underlines in his voice. Shitty talks with his hands when he gets going, waves them around above his head and laughs at himself. When Shitty meanders his way to the point of the story, which is that Johnson told him he thought he was looking forward to the team’s found family narrative finding its heart and center, whatever the fuck that means, Jack laughs too. Johnson is weird. Jack laughs and runs his hands over his face and sits up a little, and Shitty grins at him, completely unfazed.

“Was gonna ask if you wanted to haul ass up and down Faber’s stairs since it’s drizzly, but that can wait.”

“Can’t skip leg day,” Jack says, but he has no intention of moving anywhere and they both know it.

“You wanna talk about it?” Shitty asks, and again Jack stares at him.

He’s not used to being asked. When he is asked, polite and quiet coming from his therapist, they’re questions phrased as requests, telling him he’ll feel better if he gets it out there, that he needs to open up to his family. “Tell me what’s on your mind, honey,” his mom says. “Tell me how you’re feeling today,” his therapist says. “Just fucking talk to me,” Parse says.

“Not really,” Jack says. Shitty nods, and that’s that.

“Wanna watch Band of Brothers?”

“Yeah,” Jack says, and Shitty picks up his laptop from his bed and sits down next to him on the floor so their knees are touching. 

 

 

He feels really stupid about it the next day, in a naggling, frustrating way he can’t shake. He thinks of Shitty as a friend, but nobody has to put up with Jack when he’s like that, and Shitty probably changed plans to sit in Jack’s bedroom and watch a show he doesn’t really like while Jack had struggled to breathe steadily and hadn’t told him what was wrong. That’s pushing the boundaries of friendship pretty far.

Shitty isn’t around in the morning when Jack gets up, and practice is busy and hectic so he doesn’t have a chance to talk to him. And then Jack has two back-to-back classes and a study group in the library that ends badly because someone spends forty-five minutes trying to take his picture from behind a textbook before he finally stands up and tells them to just ask, already.

When he finally makes it back to his dorm he can hear Shitty’s voice from the hallway, yelling. Shitty’s often yelling, at the television or his friends or down the phone or just to himself. But this sounds particularly angry, and Jack pauses and thinks about leaving it for later before deciding that if he doesn’t apologize now he’ll probably lose his nerve.

So Jack pushes Shitty’s door open just in time to see Shitty hurtling his cell phone across the room at his bed. Jack stops. Shitty stares at him. He’s in his boxers, face red and blotchy with anger and a probably just-finished argument, if the hurtling of the phone is anything at all to go by. When he exhales, his breath his shaky.

“Hey,” he says.

“Sorry,” Jack says quickly. He’s walked into a moment he shouldn’t have, something off-balance and uncomfortable, and he momentarily thinks about just walking back out the door and flee across the hall, but he doesn’t. “Uh, sorry. Should’ve knocked.”

“Ah, it’s fine, you didn’t know you’d be walking into the tail end of World War Three,” Shitty sighs and Jack feels the sigh in his gut. “Fuck.” He runs his hands over his face and through his hair.

“I came over to see if you wanted to grab dinner, but uh—“ Jack says. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands.

“Aw, Zimmermann, you do have a heart under those pecs,” Shitty says, but it’s a bit halfhearted. “Some other time man I, uh. Well. That was my dad on the phone, in case you didn’t suss that one out, and I’m sure you’ll probably have some choice words about coping mechanisms or whatever but I think I’m just gonna get really stoned and lie on the floor for a while.”

“Oh,” Jack says. He had walked into something, but he also doesn’t really feel like he should go. A strange feeling. “I’ll order you a pizza, if you want.”

“Shut up or I’m gonna kiss you,” Shitty says, and he crosses the room to sit down heavily on his bed.

“I owe you one,” Jack makes up his mind, and he shuts Shitty’s bedroom door behind him and goes to sit next to him on the bed.

“Yo,” Shitty pauses. “You don’t have to—I’ll just go downstairs and—“

“Shitty,” Jack says. “I overdosed on anxiety medication and cheap vodka. I’ve never smoked in my life, and I don’t mind if you do.” It’s a funny thing to say out loud but it also feels good.

“Right,” Shitty says. “Didn’t wanna—you know—trying to be not an asshole. Company’s chill. You might stop me from doing something really fucking stupid. I tend to, when I’m wound up.”

“Well, I tend to hyperventilate in bathrooms,” Jack says, and Shitty glances at him sideways, the corners of his mouth turning in on themselves. “My lips are zipped and I can’t pass judgment.”

“You’re something else,” Shitty says, and he picks up his pipe. Jack watches him cross to the window and open it, light his lighter and then breathe smoke out into the evening air. It seems to him that if anyone was really set on busting kids for smoking they’d just watch the windows outside at night. “Didn’t mean to give you a free show, but the Knight family’s favorite past time is shouting obscenities so your timing was just bad.” Shitty does go on to actually lie down on the floor. Jack stays where he is, legs outstretched on Shitty’s bed. There’s a poster of Freddie Mercury on the ceiling right above where Shitty’s head would hit the pillow.

“Your dad, uh—“

“Class A dickweed,” Shitty says.

“Sorry,” Jack says.

“We’ve never gotten along but it’s gotten worse this last year,” Shitty says, and Jack marvels at his ability to just talk about what’s on his mind without anything resembling embarrassment or reflection or shame. He’s pretty sure Shitty works through things by airing out all his thoughts and picking through them, and he wishes it was something he could do. Let things out there, let them move around and dry off before taking them back in again. “It was the fucking college thing y’know, Harvard and shit, but that was really just a reason for us to be mad at each other, honestly. He’s probably been looking for reasons. Shitbag,” he says darkly. “We just fucking—you know—we just ram heads about everything until one of us gives in and I’m his fucking kid, right? Jesus. He’s so far up his own asshole I don’t think he’s seen daylight since like 1972 and he never fucking listens to me.” 

“I know—well,” Jack pauses, and his hands feel clammy suddenly. “My father’s not a dickweed. I respect him a lot,” he says. “But we’ve never been very good at talking to each other.”

Shitty rolls over so he’s on his stomach and looks at Jack, but he doesn’t say anything.

“It’s been a little better recently,” Jack says, looking at his hands. “But.”

“Bro,” Shitty says.

“Family therapy sessions,” Jack says, deadpan. “We’re a test case I guess.”

“If you stuck my family in a room and told them to talk about our feelings we’d all be dead before the 10 minute mark,” Shitty says, and chuckles darkly. “It’d be a great locked room mystery.” He rolls up off the floor to get his pipe again, lights up, then flops back down bonelessly across the bed, up in Jack’s space. Another night, Jack might have pushed him out of the way. Jack isn’t un-used to physicality—you spend enough time around team members and you adjust to it—but Shitty’s comfortable and un-self-conscious sprawl, his unapologetic semi-nakedness and the way he’s always hugging and elbowing and leaning is strange, but not bad. Usually Jack objects on principle, but not right now.

“I actually came over to apologize,” he says after a minute, because he feels like he needs to say it, “about yesterday.” His throat feels dry and sticky.

Shitty whips his head around to look at him again, and frowns. “No motherflipping need,” he says. “It was nothing! No big.”

“It was, though,” Jack says, and Shitty opens his mouth to say something else but then closes it. “That’s, um,” Jack pushes through it because he finds he wants to say this out loud, and maybe bonds of friendship do mean something after all, “that’s what the OD was, and rehab. An anxiety thing. Not cocaine. A culmination of a lot of years of not dealing with it.”

“You grew up with it?”

“Yeah,” Jack says. “But you didn’t—I mean—I try to avoid dragging other people into it. It’s messy, and embarrassing, and it freaks people out.”

“Nah brah,” Shitty says, which is staggering. “My brain’s probably way freakier than yours is. Not to, you know, belittle you, Jesus, but I am not gonna think you’re weird or anything.”

“What do you mean?” Jack asks quietly.

Shitty chews on his thumbnail for a minute, frowning. He’s looking in Jack’s direction but doesn’t really seem to be seeing him. Jack thinks Shitty isn’t going to explain when he starts talking again.

“So when I was a sophomore in high school,” he says, “I jumped off a second floor balcony at my dad’s place. Broke my ankle doing it, had to use crutches for the rest of Thanksgiving break.” He pauses, and then answers Jack’s question before Jack can even ask it. “I wanted to see what would happen, I guess, what he’d do, how mad he’d get. If he’d even notice. It was in the middle of this dinner party too, Dad was wining and dining his usual crowd of old white sleazebags and then his fucking kid leaps off a railing screaming bloody murder. He was mad I ruined a damn business deal, thought I did it for attention or something. Maybe I did.” Shitty snorts.

“What happened?” Jack asks, listening intently.

“Oh you know. Got dragged to the hospital to fix up my leg, got put on suicide watch. If I’d wanted to fucking kill myself I’d have jumped off a higher balcony, but it didn’t make sense to my dad otherwise. Got out a few days later with a diagnosis, cause jumping off a balcony for fun usually means something’s wrong with you. Pretty sure my grandfather thought I should be institutionalized or some shit, cause there was a big blowout and then Mom filed for divorce finally. Was gonna happen eventually, but maybe she needed a reason. I was on mood stabilizers for a while but they made me feel like shit so now I just smoke a lot of pot and take it a day at a time, y’know.”

“Yeah,” Jack says. “Yeah, I know.” He feels like he should say something, but he can’t, so he puts his hand on Shitty’s knee instead.

“It’s whatever,” Shitty says. “Not always a walk in the park, but you gotta roll with it. Work with what you got. Deal with it however you deal with it.”

That’s advice Jack had wished he’d gotten a long time ago.

“Like hitting people in the face with hockey sticks?” He asks, going for the joke. Shitty’s lip curls.

“Well, yeah, but that’s not the only reason I did that.”

“Hockey makes sense,” Jack says, surprising himself. “Sometimes it’s the only thing that does. It’s everything thing else that’s complicated and difficult.”

“But that’s life,” Shitty says. “I mean, sure shit’s complicated, but that’s what makes it fun, right? You’d miss, God. The satisfaction of yelling at drivers in traffic, or the way the sun looks when it’s coming up and you’ve been out all night. Watching your team win. Skating on a pond that’s frozen over when it’s real cold out, and drinking hot chocolate after.”

“Yeah, okay,” Jack can’t help but smile at that.

“Pizza rolls,” Shitty continues.

“Getting a hole in one.”

“Kissing someone new.”

“Peanut butter and jelly.”

“Befriending your hot across-the-hall teammates so they come over and listen to you yell about your problems,” Shitty says, and waggles his eyebrows.

“Hot?” Jack splutters.

“Shut up,” Shitty says. “You know it.” Jack bites his lip. “I only speak the truth,” Shitty says in a very self-satisfied way that Jack doesn’t know how to process. “Pizza. I need pizza.”

Pizza is something Jack can handle. Pizza is much less complicated than the information he’s just gotten, how it makes him feel, or the fact that Shitty just said he thinks he’s hot. Maybe Shitty has a point, though, because it doesn’t make him feel bad. 

 

10.

 

Still, that thought sits in Jack’s head, and maybe that’s why he lets Shitty drag him to a party the lacrosse team is throwing with only minimal complaining. Any other night, it’s the last place on earth Jack would want to be. The lacrosse house is across the street from the mess the hockey players live in (which Jack is, against his better judgment, attempting to finagle a spot in for next year). Marsh and Cohen and Shitty and Jack and a few of the other frogs all troop there together from the Haus, and Cohen stops them before they head inside.

“The lacrosse team are our enemies,” he says. “Drink their booze, puke in their bathroom, do not fraternize.”

“Aye, aye,” Shitty salutes and shoves his way inside, and Jack follows. College frat parties aren’t all that dissimilar from underage Q parties, and Jack isn’t really sure which one he prefers less when he’s on a one beer limit, but he figures that someone should be around with a mostly level head so nobody kicks out a window or starts a turf war or something. And he promised Shitty he would go, a few days ago at breakfast and mostly by accident. He’d shook on it, so there was no way to get out of it unless he wants to hear about it until he dies.

Jack is managing to wrangle a few freshmen out of an ill-advised beer pong challenge an hour or so later when Shitty finds him again, carrying a solo cup with something noxious-smelling in it and looking somewhere between delighted and disgusted. He slides his arm around Jack’s middle and smiles up at him and Jack drops his own arm around Shitty’s shoulders because it’s easier than pushing him off.

“Jungle juice?” he lifts the cup, and Jack takes a swig of it then makes a face.

“Eugh,” he says.

“Yup,” Shitty says. “People are doing cartwheels in the back yard, someone’s gonna break a leg.”

“Does that mean we can leave?” Jack asks. One beer is just enough to make him feel warm and a little buzzed, so it’s not a real question. If he’d wanted to go he would have.

“C’mon,” Shitty shakes his head. “Steer me in the direction of the can my good man.”

“You can’t find it yourself?”

“I wanna smoke up but if I pull this joint out of my pocket I’m going to be swarmed and I don’t wanna share with these douchebags,” Shitty says. He wriggles his fingers under Jack’s t-shirt in an attempt to tickle him, and Jack’s face gets really hot.

“Fine, fine,” he says, pulling away, and he drags Shitty towards an upstairs bathroom and locks the door behind them.

Shitty hops up onto the counter next to the sink, swings his legs back and forth a little, and flicks at his lighter. He’s wearing corduroy jeans and an extremely battered pair of Chuck Taylors and a grey sleeveless shirt that Jack is pretty sure he recalls seeing earlier that year with the sleeves still on. He’s got a plaid jacket tied around his waist and that’s where he pulls the joint out of.

“Sure hope there’s no fire alarm in here,” Shitty says, and exhales. Jack leans against the sink and watches him hum to himself and swing his legs so the heels of his sneakers bounce against the bathroom cabinets. “We can go after this if you wanna,” Shitty says. “Kind of a crap party, brah.”

“I’ve been to better,” Jack says. “And I bet you didn’t hit up a lot of house parties in private school.”

“We had to find creative fucking ways to get ‘swastey,” Shitty snorts. “Also, to smuggle food out of the cafeteria. This one friend of mine had this contraption for stealing juice and shit that fit down his pants, all these tubes and things, and he’d fill up and waddle out of the dining hall like he was constipated because he had five pounds of grape juice stuffed down his trousers.” Shitty laughs, and smoke billows up around his face. “He’d wear it at parties too. Off the wall. Use it to make tub juice.”

“What?”

“Shit,” Shitty laughs. “Secret society shit, right, they were supposedly terminated by the school in the 40’s for being exclusionary or whatever. But there’s this one called—uh fuck—well the acronym is T-U-B. Truth, Unity, Balling for Life? Some shit like that. So every year during extended period weeks, exams and shit, they put a bathtub with canned drinks on the library terrace. It’s a tradition. If you open all the drinks and mix them in the tub, that’s tub juice.”

“Oh my god,” Jack says, laughing. Shitty kicks him a little in the stomach with his foot and Jack grabs his ankle.

“Next year, brah.”

“I’ll pass.”

“Magical things happen because of tub juice. I broke into a museum once. To get laid.” Shitty shakes his head. “That was a wild one.”

Jack has a few stories of his own to tell like that, but he’d rather keep them to himself for now.

“So is college a step up or a step down?” He asks instead. Shitty chuckles and sways back and forth a little on the counter in time to the music from the party still going on outside, breathing out more smoke. Jack’s beginning to wonder if he’s feeling a little second-hand high. He feels really relaxed, his shoulders soft, and everything seems funny. They’ve been in here for a few minutes, but it feels much longer.

“Both,” Shitty decides. He kicks Jack with his other foot and Jack whacks it out of the way so Shitty sticks his hand in his face instead, the one without the joint in it. Jack grabs that too, and Shitty wraps his fingers around Jack’s wrist. His hands are a little cold, bad circulation or something, and he smells like pot and scented men’s soap in a way that actually works.

“I will not be breaking into any museums to get laid,” Jack says.

“Yeah, I bet you do just fine without the hoopla, huh,” Shitty grins, and Jack’s face flushes again. He can see it in his own reflection in the mirror over the sink. Shitty’s fingers around his wrist are a comforting weight that he doesn’t shake off.

“I don’t know,” he says.

“Sure, whatever,” Shitty says playfully, bobbing his head in time to the music again. He bobs so vigorously he tips forward a little, and Jack grabs at his knee to stop him sliding off the counter altogether. They stop, and stare at each other, Jack’s hand on Shitty’s leg. His pulse is fast suddenly, right up against his neck and in his wrist, at the spot where Shitty’s fingers are on his skin.

Another weird Samwell Saturday night, Jack thinks. Shitty’s eyes are very green and this doesn’t seem to be going away.

Well, Jack thinks. Whatever. Okay. And he leans forward and up a little because Shitty’s taller than he is sitting on the counter, and he kisses him.

It’s a bit of a miss; they bump noses and Shitty lets go of Jack’s arm and almost drops his joint so he grapples around in the air for a second with his fingers before he can grab it again. Shitty’s knee ends up in Jack’s stomach so Jack shoves it out of the way, but his own hips bump up against the bathroom counter. But Shitty grabs at his collar before Jack can pull back and presses his mouth against Jack’s own, teeth against Jack’s bottom lip, scooting forward on the counter so his knees are on either side of Jack’s hips. His chin’s unshaven and it prickles, not in a bad way, and he tastes like marijuana and beeswax chapstick and cheap beer. His hand at the back of Jack’s neck is firm, fingers still a little chilly, and Jack leans into it, kisses him harder.

“Holy shit,” Shitty says breathlessly when Jack stops. He doesn’t blush but he blinks and runs his free hand through his hair and shakes his head.

“Shut up,” Jack says.

“You, uh—“ Shitty stares at him, then shuts his mouth and leans forward again, angling Jack’s jaw upward and kissing him hard. Jack slides his hand up Shitty’s thigh then to his waist, feeling wild but bold, like he’s being egged on when Shitty runs the tip of his tongue along the crease of Jack’s top lip. Shitty uses his free hand to pull Jack closer to him by the front of his shirt, hooks his leg around Jack’s lower back so his foot is between Jack’s knees and they’re flush, hip to hip.

“Jesus fucking—“ Shitty stops again, breathing hard. Jack can feel his pulse under the skin right under Shitty’s right ear, and he kisses it, then Shitty’s jaw. Shitty exhales long and shaky, then sticks the joint back in his mouth. “What’s, uh—“ Their faces are inches apart.

“Do you want to get out of here?” Jack says before he can lose his nerve. “Go back to you—well—we live across the hall from each other but—“

“Wait,” Shitty pulls back and frowns and Jack’s heart almost stops. His hands go clammy and he can taste the beer from earlier in the back of his throat.

“What,” Jack says numbly because he’s sure he’s about to get rejected even as he thought he was succeeding.   

“Can you say that again, just in French?” Shitty says very seriously, and then grins. “Because like, major turn on, man.”

Jack’s heart starts back up again, and he laughs, and he does, and they dash out of the bathroom and out of the party together.

 

 

Jack’s relationship with sex has always been something he hasn’t dug into much, but there hasn’t been anyone else other than—well—anyway, maybe it’s something to prove to Shitty that he can have fun for five minutes and it won’t kill him.

 

 

Shitty wakes up the next morning when Jack’s alarm on his phone goes off. He hits him with a pillow. They’re smashed into his single bed, his knee caught awkwardly between Jack’s left arm and his abdomen, and Jack drags all the blankets off him as he jumps up. Shitty opens one eye, blearily.

“Eh?” he says, which is supposed to mean _what time is it?_ Or maybe _was that some kind of seriously amazing acid trip or did I suck your dick last night._

“Uh,” Jack is tugging his shirt on, and he doesn’t look back at Shitty as he hurries out the door.

Oh well, whatever, Shitty thinks. Some guys get skittish the morning after, and really he didn’t exactly expect to get that far in the first place. He goes back to bed.

 

 

“Fuck,” Jack says to himself as he heads to practice the next Monday morning. “Fuck, fuck.” Avoiding someone who lives across the hall from you is not easy, but he’s managed it well enough through Sunday. But he can’t just not go to practice, and he can’t really blow Shitty off, and with his luck there is no way Shitty just won’t be there. Jack can’t help by marvel at his own ability to completely ruin the one good thing going for him so far, again, by making a rash and un-thought-out decision. He should have stayed home. He shouldn’t have followed Shitty into the bathroom. He should have thought it out.

Shitty’s going to blow him off. Or worse, want things to go further. Jack can’t do this. He’s a mess and he has no right dragging other people into his mess, and part of his reason for coming here at all was to find some balance, figure himself out, not fuck his friends, not ruin friendships again because he doesn’t think things through.

“Yo,” Shitty waves at him when Jack gets on the ice before skating off to warm up, and Jack doesn’t know what to do with that.

He decides the only way to handle it is to deal with it right away, rip the scar right off, because if he lets it sit or tries to ignore it he’s sure it’ll become horrible rather than just uncomfortable.

Shitty seems as ebullient as ever when Jack grabs him by the arm as everyone’s packing up in the locker room.

“Hey, can I talk to you?” Jack asks, and Shitty shrugs.

“Wanna get breakfast?”

“No, I mean,” Jack coughs. “Without anyone else around. Outside the back, in five?”

“Sure, man,” Shitty says, a clear question in his voice, and Jack jogs off and paces until the loading dock door opens. He tries to practice what he’s going to say in his head, but as soon as he gets going it falls apart.

“I need to apologize,” Jack blurts when Shitty does come outside, hockey bag over his shoulder. “About Saturday. I really, well, honestly, I don’t know how to say this but um—“ Jack’s hands have gone clammy and weak. He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. “I’m not really, um. Maybe it was a mistake, not that it wasn’t good but I’m not looking—that is to say I don’t think—I, uh—“

Shitty’s been pretty good at stopping Jack’s nervous train wreck sentences in the past, but he doesn’t seem to have any idea what to do with this one, or is unwilling to lend him a hand. He’s standing on the steps with a perplexed look on his face.

“I’m really not in a place where I should be getting involved with anyone, for any reason,” Jack blurts. “It isn’t you, it’s me, it’s where I am. Things have been well, a disaster, and it’s not fair to you to think that I might—I’m not really in any position to be caught up with anybody else, or to have anyone rely on me in any way, or, you know, dating me—“

“Woah,” Shitty finally jumps in, mercifully dragging the whole thing to a halt. “Woah, woah, woah bro. Hold up.” Jack thanks him silently.

“I can try that again—“ he starts.

“Noooo!” Shitty yells. “I, uh. I have no intention of dating you. That’s like one hundred-mother-fucking-miles away from the zone that I’m at right now.”

“Oh,” Jack’s heart rate flipflops so fast it makes him feel a bit sick.

“No offense!” Shitty says quickly, holding out his hands. “Cause I mean, bro, that was really something else and you are, y’know, a specimen.” He waves one hand in the general direction of Jack’s pecs. “But that’s not where I’m at in the general scheme of things, nice butt or not.”

“That’s a relief,” Jack says. “Sorry.”

“You really thought I was gonna, what? Moon over you? Repeatedly try and remind you of our sordid midnight post-lacrosse-party tryst and cut out pictures of your face from Sports Illustrated to make a collage?”

“In my defense, you were kind of flirting with me,” Jack says.

“Yeah, and you’re the one who picked up the game of tonsil hockey! No complains though. Honestly I was kinda just seeing what would happen. You didn’t, y’know, shoot me down right away so I didn’t think I was making you uncomfortable. I cast a lot of little nets out there, man, play it by ear, see who’s into it, who might be biting. Really did not think I’d haul you in. This metaphor really got away from me but you catch my drift right?”

“Why not?” Jack asks curiously.

“You’re kinda hot shit. For a total dweeb.”

“Thanks.”

“It was fun though, yeah? I enjoyed myself.”

“Yeah,” Jack says. “Um. It was.” He smiles. “Didn’t think you could shut up for that long but you proved me wrong.”

“You’re chirpy this morning,” Shitty says. “My mouth’s got many uses.” He waggles his tongue, makes an obscene gesture. Jack’s now got very intimate knowledge of what that obscene gesture translates to in relation to Shitty’s tongue, but the more he thinks about it the less tense and tight the whole thing sits in his chest. “Can we go get breakfast to smooth over this extremely awkward conversation?”

“Please,” Jack says, with a great deal of relief.

 

11.

 

A week or so later Jack knocks on Shitty's door to drag him out of bed on a run. Shitty doesn't answer, so Jack tries the doorknob, as Shitty's sleep schedule can be as weird as Jack's own sometimes. It's not locked, and Shitty is still in bed, in a lump under the covers.

"Come on," Jack says. "Five miles, let's get moving." Shitty doesn't move, so Jack crosses the room and nudges him by the shoulder. Shitty still doesn't move, just sighs. 

"You okay?" Jack asks. 

"Not feeling it bro," Shitty mumbles into the pillow, barely audible. 

"Oh," Jack says, and he thinks he knows what this means, and it doesn't even cross his mind to take it personally. He goes back across the hall for his computer and turns on Band of Brothers, and he isn't sure if Shitty actually watches it with him or just goes back to sleep. But he thanks him later, quietly, so it's fine.

 

12.

"C'mon Zimmermann it'll be fun," Shitty says, stretching the word until it breaks. Shitty can do an impressive wheedle and he thinks he'll have perfected it by the time he graduates because of Jack Zimmermann.

Jack gives him a look. "I don't want to go to the mixer the tennis team is holding," he says. "I want to stay in and watch Netflix."

"You can stay in and watch Netflix when you're dead!" Shitty is leaning around Jack's doorframe grinning at him. Jack is on his bed, looking handsome and put-out. 

"Ugh," Jack says.

"Fun, Jacques. It's good for you. "

"I hate you."

"You don't," Shitty says with certainty. 

Jack gets up off the bed. 

 

 

The tennis mixer is actually fun, and Jack gets dragged along to a mixer afterparty, which is such a uniquely liberal-arts-college experience that he has a hard time complaining. He debates the merits of Federer over Nadal with some of the tennis underclassmen and drinks soda out of a solo cup for a while, and he's in the middle of a conversation about how Serena Williams is probably America's greatest living athlete of the moment when Shitty pushes through the crowd and finds him. 

"Mind if we bounce?" he asks, and Jack says goodbye. "Sorry, bro," Shitty says as they walk back towards campus. "I thought had a rapport going with the women's tennis captain, but then I started getting the vibe that she wasn't into it and I thought I'd do the gentlemanly thing and not make her uncomfortable by hanging around anymore." 

"Bad luck," Jack says. It's breezy now that the sun has gone down, and he pulls up the collar on his coat. Shitty looks a little more pulled together than usual, but is not wearing a jacket and does not look cold. 

"Eh," Shitty says. "She's not into me. I can respect that. I live to score another day." 

"You still want to?" It's a thought that flashes through Jack's mind and he lets it, for some reason, because things between them are easy and good and they've gotten the weird stuff out of the way, anyway. Shitty stops walking.

"Eh?" 

"If you're not busy." 

"What, you sleep with me once and then think you can pull on my tender heartstrings?" Shitty laughs."You, uh, serious?" 

"What if I am?" Jack shoves his hands in his pockets. 

"Well, I mean, I'm not gonna say no," Shitty says. "Once is whatever, but twice is a pattern, Zimmermann." 

"Depends on what kind of pattern you're talking about," Jack says, and his face is a little hot but not in a way that makes him feel nervous. "I'm not changing my mind about what I said the other day. But it was fun, right?" 

"Yeah," Shitty runs his hands through his hair and nods. "You're just full of surprises." 

"I'm not about to fall in love with you," Jack says.

"Bro, you already are. Don't lie. C'mon then," Shitty starts walking back towards their dorm with determination. "Better keep up." 

Maybe he has a point, Jack thinks as he chuckles and follows Shitty inside. Loving someone doesn't always have to feel the same way every time, and it doesn't have to be hard, and it doesn't have to hurt. And maybe it can be more like friendship, but that doesn't mean it matters less. 

 

13.

Shitty’s mom comes to see their last home game (which they lose, but barely) which is the first time Jack’s met either of Shitty’s parents in person. He’d had a hard time even imagining what they look like; in his head, Shitty’s dad is a walking suit and tie. His mom is tall with curly brown hair that’s starting to go grey in a way that suggests she’s not interested in covering it up, and when Jack runs into them outside Shitty’s dorm room she’s wearing glasses around her neck on a chain and a brightly patterned skirt with birds and flowers on it. Shitty’s wearing his NASCAR t-shirt. They have the same nose.

“I don’t really know much about hockey but you looked pretty good out there,” she says when Jack shakes her hand. Jack thanks her. “I’ll have to take both out to lunch sometime,” she continues, “but I really need to run. I have 40 damn papers to grade before tomorrow at noon and they’re all a bit of a mess.”

“Good luck,” Jack says, and Shitty salutes her then lets her hug him.

“Give me a call and we’ll figure out who will come pick up your stuff after finals week,” she says.

“Yeah, will do. Get moving, old lady. Essays on Frankenstein’s morality won’t grade themselves.”

“Love you, Bernie,” Shitty’s mom says, and Shitty screams.

 

 

Later that evening, Shitty is in the middle of yanking Jack’s shirt over his head when he pauses and points one accusing finger in Jack’s face.

“If I hear any sound that at all resembles the word ’Bernie’ out of you during this I will hit you in the face so hard you will see God,” he says, very seriously for someone wearing nothing but American flag boxers and a hard-on.

“Don’t worry,” Jack says. “That’s definitely a buzzkill. But since you brought it up—“

“What,” Shitty says flatly.

“Bernie? What was your mom thinking?”

“Short for Bernard,” Shitty mumbles. “Not her idea.”

“Yikes,” Jack says, with as much sympathy as he can muster.

“I get to share a name with Fuckface McDickweasel, but the bright side is I have enough ammunition to guilt-trip my mother for about 50 years,” Shitty sighs. “But I swear to god, Zimmermann. If this gets around anywhere—anywhere—I will know who spread it and I will find you and I will end you.”

“Is that a nice thing to say to someone who’s about to suck your dick?” Jack asks, going for the joke that he also hopes Shitty realizes is a promise.

Shitty shrugs. “Are you gonna not?”

“Well,” Jack pauses. “I don’t know. I’m hurt.”

“Shut up, Zimmermann,” Shitty says, and Jack grins, and does. 

 

14. 

“If you say a word about my fucking car I’m terminating our friend contract,” Shitty says severely, as Jack follows him into the front door of the Haus carrying the last of Shitty’s things.

“Your car?” Jack nudges Shitty in the back with the box he’s carrying to get him to move out of the way, and Shitty grumbles internally about the relative size of his biceps. His arm muscles are aching from  hauling their crap from their dorm rooms to the Haus all morning. He has more stuff than Jack does, so they’re finishing up with the last of his boxes, which unfortunately are the heavy ones.

“Yeah,” Shitty starts up the stairs with his box of textbooks, thinking longingly of a cold beer on the lawn. Soon. Finals are over and dorms have been checked out of and he’s almost in the free and clear. Summer, soon. “The one my dad’s gonna be driving. Apparently I’m going to get to drive it next year. You cannot laugh.”

“I didn’t know we had a friendship contract,” Jack apparently gets tired of walking behind Shitty and pushes past him to drop the box onto the floor of Shitty’s bedroom, the room closest to the stairs on the second floor of the Haus.

“Uh, of course we do!” Shitty says, as offended as he can sound considering how tired he is. He deposits his own box on the bed he’ll be occupying next year. He’d won his way into the Haus with the promise of lifetime backrubs to Carter Marsh—a particular talent he’d developed from years of private school—and he honestly wasn’t positive if Jack had gotten lucky in the lottery or had done some favors for someone or had just flashed his perfect Canadian baby blues and wooed his way into a bedroom. The point was, they were both set up to inhabit two side-by-side bedrooms next year, and it was a bit like the cherry on top of a weird and somewhat arduous, definitely alcohol-soaked but positively worth-it freshman year sundae.

“Does it say that you have to let me get homework done during the week?” Jack asks, leaning against the doorframe. “Or that you’re not allowed to complain when I need to train early in the morning? Or that you have to wear pants in my bedroom?”

“Bro,” Shitty says. “I thought we jumped that hurdle a while back.”

“Not a hurdle,” Jack says. “A wall.”

“I can’t believe we’re next-door roommates again,” Shitty says happily, ignoring him. “And we’re sharing a bathroom! It’s fate.”

“Or something.” Jack hasn’t explicitly said anything but Shitty can tell he’s maybe a little nervous about actually living with other members of the team, being around them every day, having to (at least on some level) befriend them. Shitty sympathizes, but he also thinks it’ll be good for him.

“You ever think this would happen, the first time you feasted your eyes on me?” Shitty asks, and he hugs Jack around the middle because he knows Jack hates it.

“No,” Jack says, but his eyes are bright. “Get off.”

“I’m gonna go shotgun a beer and sprawl in the grass,” Shitty says, obliging. “All this shit can wait til August.” He waves a hand at the stacked boxes in his bedroom, and trots off down the stairs. Jack follows behind him a minute later.

“Remind me that I gotta pick up some crappy but comfy lawn furniture over the summer,” Shitty says. The only thing in the fridge is Natty Light, but it’s free so he can’t complain too much.

“Why?” Jack is drinking OJ.

“I wanna put some lawn chairs up on the roof.” Shitty points with his keys to the section of roof over the porch. One of Jack’s windows opens out over it, another from the hall and a third from Johnson’s bedroom.

“You’re gonna die,” Jack says. “It’ll collapse.”

“Nah,” Shitty shakes his head. “I mean, it won’t, right? Let’s check it out later.”

“You can do that on your own,” Jack says.

Shitty punches a hole in the back end of his beer can with his keys and raises it in Jack’s direction. “Freshman year, man,” he says, and Jack holds up his own cup and taps it against the can. “When the going gets weird,” Shitty says, “the weird turn pro.” And he pops the tab on the can and downs the beer.

“You make that up?” Jack asks when Shitty burps and crushes the can against his chest.

“Hunter S. Thompson,” Shitty says, and flops down on the grass contentedly.

 

 

Jack sees Shitty’s dad coming up the road before Shitty does, and he did promise not to say anything but he does allow himself a good laugh when he’s sure Shitty is not in the room. Shitty’s father, who is tall and balding and wearing a suit, is driving a powder-blue Prius.

“Summer vacay calls,” Shitty sighs when he comes back into the room. He’s a few inches shorter than his father, Jack notices, but they do look similar around the nose and jaw. Shitty looks like he smiles more.

“This looks like a lawsuit waiting to happen,” Mr. Knight says as he steps onto the porch of the Haus. Jack is sitting on the couch in the living room and Shitty gestures at him so he doesn’t get up. “We can afford to rent you an apartment, you know.”

“I’m gonna learn property law over the summer,” Shitty says.

“Look, I have a dinner meeting so we need to get going or I’m going to miss it,” Mr. Knight says. “I don’t understand why your mother couldn’t come get you.”

“Keep your trousers on, I’ll go get my shit,” Shitty says. “I think her words were ‘pulling your parental weight,’ by the way.”

“Hmph,” Shitty’s dad doesn’t come in the front door, and Jack follows Shitty into the stairwell as he passes. Shitty picks up his suitcase and sighs.

“I’m just at his for the week and then Mom and I are going to Portland, thank fuck,” he says. “Don’t forget what a cell phone is, alright?”

“Eh?” Jack says. “Can’t say I know what that is. We’re a bit behind you all up north, doncha know?”

“Fuck off and Skype me, jackass.”

“Yeah,” Jack says. “Promise.”

They smile at each other for a minute, Shitty a few steps up the stairs so he’s taller than Jack.

“It’s been—“ Jack pauses, because this strange year has been a lot of things. Difficult, sure, but also good. “Well. This wasn’t at all how I thought this year was going to go.”

“Bro,” Shitty says, and puts his hand on Jack’s shoulder. “You should come down and visit me in Cambridge before we gotta be back here!” He says. “We can sightsee and all that shit.”

“Sure,” Jack says. “Sounds like fun.”

“Me neither,” Shitty says, jumping through the thread of their conversation. “This year. Was alright though, yeah? Didn’t scare you off?”

“No,” Jack says. “It was alright. Have a good summer, Shitty.”

Shitty leans forward and Jack thinks he’s going to hug him but he catches Jack’s chin with his fingers and kisses him on the mouth instead. It’s brief and gentle, no heat or spark, just familiarity, carrying nothing more than the fact of an absence of space between them. His unshaven chin tickles.

“Yeah man you too,” Shitty says when he pulls back. He smiles and squeezes past Jack on the stairs to head towards the front door. “Promise me you’ll relax at least a little bit, yeah?”

Jack watches the front door slam behind him, watches Shitty climb into the stupid blue Prius and wave through the window.

“Yeah,” he says, and heads upstairs to his new bedroom.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> outro

Lardo and Holster are on the same pong team and they're winning, but for some reason she isn't feeling it tonight. 

He is, naturally. He's flattered she teamed up with him and keeps fist pumping and shouting and taking shots. Lardo humors him for a while, wins a few games and gets a little drunk, but it feels like too much energy to keep at it and she has like forty-five team emails to send out in the morning and a bunch of schedules to go through and some meetings to set up, and a lot of neglected schoolwork to do, and a headache. 

All of these things feel like an actual physical weight on her head, and that's not even digging into the situation with Shitty, who is currently waving his arms around in time to "YMCA" in a Hawaiian shirt, despite the fact that it's currently January and snowing. 

Lardo's always been proud of her ability to carve out space for herself when a lot of other things are going on, a natural skill when you're a little shy and go to a massive public high school and would rather spend your time sketching than socializing. It's come in handy at Samwell because she loves these guys, really really loves them, but sometimes they're all a lot to handle. You can only compartmentalize so much, though, and right now she's tired, and confused, and has things on her mind she isn't sure who to talk about with.

Usually, she goes to Shitty when she doesn't have an answer to a problem. But Shitty sort of is the problem, so that's out. Ransom and Holster wouldn't be able to hear her out with a chorus of "I-told-you-so's" and Bitty, as much as he's become one of her best friends, would blow it up into a huge predicament, which is not what Lardo needs right now. She's talked to her roommate a little, and to her collection of friends in the art program, but while they listen attentively and try to help out, they really don't get it. 

She shakes Holster off by finding Chowder and daring him to do the splits, and then slips upstairs before anyone can notice she's gone. The party going on isn't a big one, and the upstairs hallway is pretty quiet and free of canoodlers or pukers. 

"Occupied!" Jack shouts angrily when Lardo knocks on his door.

"Yo, it's me," she calls, and she hears a chair being pushed back and a second later the door opens. Jack's in sweats, usual around the Haus attire, and he smiles at her. 

"Sorry," he says. "Assumed you were someone looking for a hookup spot. I locked all the doors up here already. Bittle keeps forgetting to do his." 

"Well, that was nice of you," Lardo says, "but not why I'm here. I was actually hoping I could talk you into walking me back to my dorm." 

"Oh," Jack glances towards the window at the snow, then shrugs. It isn't coming down hard, just softly, though serious weather is in the forecast. "Let me get you a hat, though." 

The hat's too big, but Lardo doesn't mind. They head downstairs together and push through the party. She's opening the door when Shitty hurtles in their direction.

"Yoooo," he warbles, and he flings himself at Jack, who catches him before he can topple over. "Where you two off to? You ditching us?" 

"I'm just gonna walk Lardo home," Jack says. "The weather, and all." 

Shitty pouts, but reaches up and plants a big one on the side of Jack's face. The kiss hits Jack half on his lips, but he doesn't seem too bothered by it. 

"Bye, Shits," he says, and ushers Lardo out the door. She knocks snow off the railing as she goes down the steps into the street, and Jack follows a second later, shoving his second foot into his snowboots. 

"Pretty out," he says, and it is, if you like cold weather. Lardo could take it or leave it.

They walk in silence back towards campus, Jack taking one step for every one of Lardo's two, her breath and his twin icy clouds separated by a foot of headspace. They could probably pass the whole walk in quiet, which is a nice break, but Lardo does want to tell him something so she makes herself bring it up.

"I hope this isn't total TMI," she says, "but I'm not sure who to talk to about it, so." 

Jack glances down at her, and his face is brightened by the overhead streetlights. Everything is very yellow because of the snow. "Sure," he says.

"Please don't use your captain-y voice," Lardo says. "It's not that kind of problem. It's Shitty." 

"What did he do?" 

"Me," Lardo says, and Jack snorts unexpectedly. "We slept together, on Halloween. And then again after Thanksgiving. And a few times over winter break." 

"I was wondering why he was being so suspicious about avoiding you after that party," Jack says, and Lardo rolls her eyes. 

"We talked, it was fine. Is. I don't know. It wasn't going to be a big anything," Lardo sighs, and her sigh crystallizes in the chilly air. "But I'm kinda worried it is. Don't laugh."

"Never," Jack says, and she can tell he means it. 

"I think I might be-- I think I might-- ah, man." 

Jack doesn't say anything. He puts his hand, big and warm, on her shoulder. 

"I'm an idiot," Lardo says.

"No," he shakes his head, and snow falls out of his hair. 

They keep walking for another few minutes. 

"So," Jack says eventually, and a little mischievously. "How is it? I understand that Shitty's, well, pretty good at it." 

"How the hell do you know that?" Lardo looks up at him. Jack shrugs innocently.

"You hear things," he says. "Through the grapevine. You know." 

"He's very good at it," Lardo says. "But, the grapevine?"

Jack shrugs, and keeps walking. Lardo stops.

"Oh my God," she says. "No."

"What?" Jack looks back at her. 

"No way," Lardo goggles at him. "No fucking way, Jack Zimmermann, you are not that transparent. You're Batman, you'd never-- ooooh, buddy." 

"I'm not Batman," Jack says. "And I don't know what you're talking about." 

"You do!" Lardo points a finger at him, exhilarated. "Through the grapevine, my ass! Jack." 

"Lardo."

"You'd tell me, right? If you had firsthand experience with Shitty's proficiency in the sack. That's something one of you would have mentioned to me, isn't it?" Jack says nothing, and Lardo gapes. "Oh my God," she manages. "You did! You two did! Holy shit." 

"I don't know what you mean," Jack says, his face perfectly expressionless. "Aren't you getting cold?" 

"Be straight with me," Lardo says. "Did it happen or not?"

"I think you need to ask Shitty," Jack shrugs, and Lardo splutters. "I don't know, Lardo. Freshman year was something else." 

**Author's Note:**

> title from 'the new year' by death cab for cutie  
> this really very nearly got very out of hand and expanded into their sophmore year and jack coming out to shitty but it was way too long so i had to wrangle it in hehe. also i feel bad because i didnt really write about ransom & holster but i really wanted to do lardo's pov so oh well sorry boys
> 
> (runs my face into a wall) kissing friends!!!!


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